While cybersecurity threats grab headlines, the physical and cognitive risks associated with AR deployment can be equally damaging to organizations and individuals. A worker injured while using poorly designed AR interfaces, or a critical error caused by information overload, can have immediate and lasting consequences that extend far beyond data breaches.

What are human factors in AR?

Human factors in engineering focuses on optimizing the interaction between people and systems. In AR contexts, this includes ergonomics, cognitive load, situational awareness, and user acceptance. Poorly designed AR experiences can lead to fatigue, errors, or even accidents, especially in industrial or field environments where safety is paramount.

The unique challenges of human AR factors include:

Visual and Cognitive Load: AR overlays information onto the real world, potentially creating visual clutter or cognitive overload. Users must process both digital and physical information simultaneously, which can lead to attention tunneling or missed critical cues.

Ergonomic Considerations: Head-mounted displays can cause neck strain, eye fatigue, and balance issues, particularly during extended use. The weight distribution, field of view, and display brightness all impact user comfort and safety.

Situational Awareness: AR can enhance situational awareness by providing contextual information, but it can also reduce it by obscuring important visual cues or creating false confidence in automated systems.

Social and Environmental Factors: AR use in shared spaces can create safety hazards for both users and bystanders who may not be aware of the user’s altered perception of reality.

How to reduce risk:

Use AREA’s assessment tools to evaluate your AR solutions before deployment. The Safety and Human Factors Assessment Framework provides a systematic approach to identifying and mitigating risks throughout the AR development and deployment lifecycle.

The framework includes several key components:

Risk Identification: Systematic evaluation of potential hazards associated with AR use in specific environments and tasks. This includes physical hazards (trips, falls, collisions), cognitive hazards (information overload, distraction), and social hazards (isolation, communication barriers).

User-Centered Design: Involving end users in testing and feedback loops throughout the development process. This includes usability testing, ergonomic assessments, and long-term studies of user adaptation and acceptance.

Environmental Assessment: Evaluating the physical and social environment where AR will be used. Factors such as lighting conditions, noise levels, space constraints, and the presence of moving machinery or vehicles all impact safety.

Training and Support: Developing comprehensive training programs that address not just how to use AR systems, but how to use them safely. This includes recognizing signs of fatigue, understanding system limitations, and knowing when to disengage from AR interfaces.

Real-world examples from AREA use cases and fireside chats demonstrate the importance of human factors considerations:

Manufacturing Case Study: One AREA member shared how a simple change in AR interface design reduced user errors by 30%. The original design placed critical safety information in the peripheral vision area, where it was often missed during complex assembly tasks. Moving this information to the central field of view dramatically improved safety outcomes.

Training Application: Another use case highlighted the importance of regular safety drills for AR-equipped workers. Initial deployment showed promising productivity gains, but incident rates increased due to over-reliance on AR guidance. Implementing regular “AR-off” drills helped maintain situational awareness and emergency response capabilities.

Field Service: A telecommunications company discovered that AR-guided maintenance procedures were causing technicians to ignore standard safety protocols. The AR interface was so engaging that users focused exclusively on digital instructions while ignoring physical safety cues. Redesigning the interface to include explicit safety reminders and environmental awareness prompts resolved the issue.

The AREA Safety and Human Factors Assessment includes practical tools for measuring and improving AR safety:

Usability Metrics: Standardized measures of task completion time, error rates, and user satisfaction that can be tracked over time and compared across different AR implementations.

Physiological Monitoring: Guidelines for measuring eye strain, neck tension, and other physical indicators of AR-related stress or fatigue.

Cognitive Load Assessment: Methods for evaluating the mental workload imposed by AR interfaces and identifying opportunities for simplification or optimization.

Safety Culture Integration: Strategies for incorporating AR safety considerations into existing organizational safety programs and cultures.

Implementation Best Practices

Start with low-risk applications and gradually expand to more critical use cases as experience and confidence grow. Training simulations and maintenance support are often good starting points before moving to safety-critical applications.

Establish clear protocols for AR use, including when to engage and disengage AR interfaces, how to handle system failures, and procedures for emergency situations. These protocols should be regularly practiced and updated based on experience.

Monitor user feedback and safety metrics continuously. Early warning signs of human factors issues include increased error rates, user complaints about fatigue or discomfort, and reluctance to use AR systems.

Collaborate with safety professionals, ergonomics experts, and human factors engineers throughout the AR development and deployment process. Their expertise is essential for identifying and mitigating risks that may not be obvious to AR developers or IT professionals.

Final thought:

Security and safety go hand in hand in AR deployments. By addressing human factors early in the development process, you not only protect your people, but you also boost AR adoption and ROI. Users who feel safe and comfortable with AR systems are more likely to embrace them fully and realize their potential benefits.

The investment in human factors assessment and design pays dividends in reduced training costs, lower error rates, improved user satisfaction, and most importantly, safer workplaces. In an era where AR is becoming mission-critical for many enterprises, human factors can’t be an afterthought—they must be built into the foundation of every AR deployment.

[Supporting Visual: AR Safety & Human Factors Risk Matrix – See attached branded risk assessment matrix with specific AR risk examples and mitigation framework]

Usability is an essential prerequisite for any successful AR application. If any aspect of the application – from the cognitive impact on the user to the comfort of the AR device – has a significant negative impact on usability, it could discourage user acceptance and limit projected productivity gains and return-on-investment.

But how can organizations pursuing an AR application evaluate a solution’s usability? To answer that question, the AREA Human Factors Committee has undertaken the development of an AR and MR Usability Heuristic Checklist. Driven by Jessyca Derby and Barbara S. Chaparro of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and Jon Kies of Qualcomm, the Checklist is intended to be used as a tool for practitioners to evaluate the usability and experience of an AR or MR application.

The AR & MR Usability Heuristic Checklist currently includes the following heuristics:

• Unboxing & Set-Up
• Help & Documentation
• Cognitive Overload
• Integration of Physical and Virtual Worlds
• Consistency & Standards
• Collaboration
• Comfort
• Feedback
• User Interaction
• Recognition Rather than Recall
• Device Maintainability

The team is in the process of validating these heuristics across a range of devices and applications. So far, they have conducted evaluations with head-mounted display devices (such as Magic Leap and HoloLens), mobile phones, educational applications, and AR/MR games; see their recent journal article for more information.

To further ensure that the breadth of the AR and MR Usability Heuristic Checklist remains valuable across domains and devices, they are in the process of conducting further validation that will consider:

• Privacy
• Safety
• Inclusion, Diversity, and Accessibility
• Technical aspects of designing for AR and MR (e.g., standards for 3D rendering)
• Standards for sensory output (e.g., tactile feedback, spatial audio, etc.)
• Applications that involve multiple users to collaborate in a shared space
• A range of devices (e.g., AR and MR glasses such as Lenovo’s Think Reality A3)

In the coming months, the team will move on to identifying and obtaining applications and/or hardware that touch on the areas outlined above. They will then conduct heuristic evaluations and usability testing with the applications and/or hardware to further refine and validate the Checklist. The final step will be to establish an Excel-based toolkit that will house the Checklist. This will enable practitioners to easily complete an evaluation and immediately obtain results.

Upon completion of the project, the AR and MR Usability Heuristic Checklist will become a vital resource for any organization considering the adoption of AR. If you would like to learn more or have an idea for an application that could be included in this validation process, please contact Dr. Barbara Chaparro or Jessyca Derby.

AREA: What does Human Factors in Augmented Reality encompass?

Kies: Human Factors is the study of humans, from both cognitive and physical perspectives. We investigate how humans interact with devices, applications, and services, and incorporate those insights into the design of systems. In the case of AR, it’s especially important because you may be wearing a device on your head, and interacting via an interface overlaid on the real world.  This is arguably one of the most challenging design problems.

AREA: Do we still have a lot to learn about the Human Factors implications of AR?

Kies: That’s absolutely the case. The technology is still evolving. Many current devices can’t be used for a significant amount of time. It’s going to get there, but there are some technical hurdles that need to be resolved. That’s why it’s super-important that human characteristics become part of the requirements and are factored into the device design process.

AREA: How much of our past user experience knowledge is relatable to AR, and how much is starting from scratch?

Kies: We’re not entirely starting from scratch. A lot of people in the field have experience designing for 2D interfaces like smartphones. But you then have to translate that to a spatial computing paradigm where everything is not only in 3D, but also superimposed on the real world. That’s unlike a smartphone or a PC, where the interface is primarily contained in a rectangle. That’s what makes AR enormously challenging compared to working with other computing platforms. But there has been a lot of research in AR and VR in the military and universities, so there’s a lot to glean from those areas, and established human-centered design processes are still relevant.

AREA: What’s your top priority for the AREA Human Factors Committee this year?

Kies: Our overriding goal is to identify and develop best practices to help ensure the best possible AR user experience. In pursuit of that goal, our number-one priority is to engage more with academic research labs – to invite them to share their findings with the AREA membership. They are often experimenting with or building the latest technologies and they’re learning a great deal from their studies. Another thing we’re discussing is compiling a set of unique human-centered design practices that are pertinent to AR systems. And of course, we always want to get more AREA members involved in the Committee.

AREA: What’s your pitch for why AREA members should get involved in the Human Factors Committee?

Kies: My bias is toward conversation. Having meetings that act as a forum where people can talk about the challenges they’re facing, the successes they’ve had, and just connect – that’s a compelling reason to participate. By participating in Human Factors Committee meetings, end-user members have an opportunity to hear about other members’ experiences and lessons learned and apply that knowledge to their own efforts. For AR solutions providers, it’s an opportunity to get direct feedback from the AR user community.  We also hope that concrete deliverables, like guidance on design, will enable AREA members to optimize their enterprise AR solutions for their target users.

It’s all about making connections and enabling dialogue – between users and providers, between the AR ecosystem and academic institutions – to everyone’s benefit. We’d like to build out a vibrant AR Human Factors community where people are learning from each other, contributing ideas, highlighting new discoveries, and finding solutions.

If you’re an AREA member and would like more information about joining the AREA Human Factors Committee, contact Jonathan Kies or AREA Executive Director Mark Sage. If you’re not yet an AREA member but interested in AR human factors and design, please consider joining; you can find member information here.